I now also have VA3CJA as a secondary call sign. I was fortunate enough to get 'SHA'

which is my full intials. My grandson has shown great interest in amateur radio so

I grabbed 'CJA' (which is his initials) and I will hold it for him until he is licenced.

I received my 60 meter licence with the call VX9SHA, but now that the band is open to all,

the licence will just hang on the wall as a memento.

Licensed October 19, 2010 as Basic+

and I now have completed and received my Advanced Certification.

I use a Degen LPA21070 vertical beam antenna for 144/220/440 and I can swing it around by hand for direction.

No concern here since I only run 5 watts to hit the local repeaters.

Using a Heil PR781 mic to drive the Kenwood TS-2000 All Bander, but the D104 is great for DX. The TS2000 is the exciter for a Dentron Clipperton L amp. A nice addition to the shack for those nights when propagation is tough. Made my own conversion to add the 'Cool Blue' LED's for the LCD display on the TS2000.

Ham Radio Deluxe is my software of chioce.

I am using PSK Meter (Google it) to make sure my signal track is tight with no splatter when in the PSK mode.

It runs on the Imo mini monitor like an ocilliscope and adjusts the Tx & Rx audio settings automatically.

I love to keep track of the countries I have gotten into. Only 1 pin per country/state/province helps keep the map uncluttered.

The HF antenna is a Hustler 5BTV ground mounted beside the garage due to limited space and I have had real good results with this antenna on all bands. I have added the 12 & 17 meter WARC traps as well as the 60 meter band so it is now an 8 bander! I used an MFJ-259B analyzer to set it up, and all bands are running at 1.2:1 or lower.

You can find me on all the bands!

Here's a close up of the 17 & 12 meter traps from DX Engineering. They do a fine job.

40 is my favourite, but I end up everywhere and I am only missing an antenna for 1.2gHz and it will come in time.

The 160 meter antenna was a challenge in a small yard, so I ran 68 feet of stranded wire from the 3rd floor loft to the far end of the garage. I then wound 80 turns of 16 gauge enameled wire on a 1" form to make the antenna resonate. I used the MFJ 259 analyzer and removed turns from the coil to achieve a 1:1 match at 1.900 mhz. I ended up with 57 turns on the loading coil. The shield of the coax was then run 40 feet down the side wall of the house to a ground rod for the counterpoise.

I guess you would call this an end fed sloper.

At present, I am playing with all the digital modes and that is a lot of fun.